Cranky Is Coming

[slightlyoffaxis]

So, we signed up for HBO. It was nice knowing you all.

Jesse immediately dived in and started DVRing movies. (Jesse, I swear Cyrus is on Netflix Instant-you don't need to take up DVR space with it!) I, on the other hand, wanted to start sampling all of those shows that everyone raves about but I'd been barred from since I (before now) refused to

Comments

[freakjaw]

I've definitely been thinking a bit about this subject since we talked about it (I guess when you first brought up those articles), and watching the first four or five episodes of Luck has informed my thinking a bit. I had just assumed, sight-unseen, that it might be too dense or impenetrable or plain-old-boring to be enjoyable (like John From Cincinnati, which I also haven't seen!), but I was surprised to find myself engaged by the first episode. I thought it had interesting characters, good writing and performances, good filmmaking, and a really intriguing world that I didn't know much about. I found the process of figuring out the ins and outs of the racing world and it's attendant culture (with some hand-holding, but not a ton) to be kind of exciting. It definitely struck me as being akin to something like Mad Men or Treme in the way it seemed to insist that the subculture it was depicting, and the craft & sensitivity of the writing & performances, would be enough to hold an audience's attention, without the blood-and-breasts genre hooks of stuff like The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, or even The Wire. They have their own aesthetic hooks that might do some of that job (60s glamor in Mad Men, music in Treme, and I guess Michael Mann-style filmmaking and track/gambling culture in Luck), but they are ultimately insisting that their characters are enough. Maybe there's a master story that will emerge or become clear as I get closer to the end of the season, but for now I'm plenty interested in the characters and their relationships, both with each other and with the track/horse racing itself. The true subject of the show seems to be, based on Luck and Deadwood, one that David Milch is deeply interested in exploring: the way people come together to form communities and the way these communities function as an ecosystem. The shows share a similar humane soul, and a shaggy personality that I really enjoy.

I've read somewhere that The Wire is a show that teaches you how to watch itself, and I actually think that's kind of true about most television. There's a tendency for audiences to say things like "that show got really good about four episodes in" or "that actor seemed to get comfortable in their role about a half hour into the movie" (which doesn't always make sense to me, since most movies aren't going to be shot strictly sequentially), and what that usually seems to mean to me is "I eventually became acclimated to the pace/performing rhythms/style/world of whatever I was watching." Now, obviously with something like a television show there actually is a learning curve where the people making it are actually figuring out what works and how to make the show they're working on as they go. So this does kind of operate along a spectrum (like I'd say Arrested Development and The Wire are more on the "you got used to what they were doing" end, while Parks and Recreation and the American Office are further on the "they improved/clarified their show" end). And it's further complicated in the case of an HBO show where they don't have to do the network thing of establishing everything in their pilot and then doing it again for the next four episodes, so you might still be getting vital inciting information a couple of episodes in. But generally I'd say that the best of those shows tend to be good for other reasons early enough that if it's not clicking for you after a couple of episodes, cut it loose. HBO being so creator-driven also gives their viewers some information here. I'd give Davids Simon or Milch the benefit of the doubt if a pilot didn't hook me because their previous shows have proven to be a pretty good map for what to expect from their follow-up shows.